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I totally agree. I just made a note on my phone today about how in future if there wasn’t some kind of a law to protect “owners” of hardware they “purchased” f

I totally agree. I just made a note on my phone today about how in future if there wasn’t some kind of a law to protect “owners” of hardware they “purchased” from cross promotion or added inconveniences due to upselling services I would be quite sad. For e.g. the experience of backing up your iPhone photographs to a external hard disk could be A LOT better if Apple was satisfied with the money they make from selling the device and didn’t want to sell us their iCloud service. I so hate growth at all cost mindset that is visible in every business these days. I wish investors would just get used to lower growth rates.

HWR_14 4y ago
Backing up iPhone photos to an external disk is pretty easy. It's not the happy path because most people cannot handle their own backups.
- plussed_reader 4y ago
  Not if you want to avoid itunes or icloud.
  - simjnd 4y ago
    If you have macOS you don't need either, just plug your iPhone open up "/Applications/Image Capture.app" and it will show your photos. You can select and drag and drop to a disk and delete them all from this app.
    - lostlogin 4y ago
      Having it happen automatically is what I was after, and that isn’t particularly easy to achieve. There must surely be a better way than my nasty hack, but I do now have automatic backups of iPhone photos onto a nas: A VM running macOS and a script. Open Photos.app and sync with ‘Download Originals’ checked. Quit Photos.app and rsync the folder ‘Originals’ out of the app bundle and onto a NAS. Once finished, reopen Photos.app. It’s quite horrible getting the script to run as permissions get tricky with chrontab, so I used Lingon X to schedule it.
      - glorioushubris 4y ago
        Maybe try it with an app on the phone instead? I've been using Synology's photos app to automatically upload everything in my photos library to my NAS for a couple of months now, and it's been seamless. Other apps, like PhotoSync, seem to offer similar functionality in a platform-independent way.
        lostlogin 4y ago
        Thank you - I’ve had this suggested before but just couldn’t get it to work. I’ll have another go as that is obviously way better (and saves running a very large VM).
      - HWR_14 4y ago
        Modern versions of iTunes and modern iOS versions can be set up so that whenever they are on the same network iTunes automatically backs up over WiFi in the background. Then it's just a matter of a cron job pushing the files to the NAS.
        lostlogin 4y ago
        That’s not a million miles off what I’m doing. It’s unhelpful that there isn’t a built in way to get images out of Photos.app as downloading a full library can use a lot of storage.
      - simjnd 4y ago
        My bad, I misunderstood. Do you do all of this with an AppleScript? I would be really interested to look at this if you have it hosted on a repo somewhere.
  - 0x0 4y ago
    Image Capture.app, which is built in to macOS, is very no-nonsense and works great.
  - acdha 4y ago
    You can use an adapter: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD821AM/A/lightning-to-usb-camera-adapter https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD821AM/A/lightning-to-us...
  - HWR_14 4y ago
    I mean, "avoiding backup software on your computer" seems like a big ask for organized backups. But, yeah, I have lightening drives that connect directly to download pictures onto (well, purchased as a gift).. They even also have USB to be read in a computer.
- capableweb 4y ago
  Can you just connect a external disk into the iPhone and click on "Backup" or it requires more than that?
  - MagicMoonlight 4y ago
    No, but you also can't do that with a linux computer or any other device. You can easily copy and paste all of the photos onto a computer though.
    - josephcsible 4y ago
      What's stopping me from setting up a Linux computer to do that?
    - dividuum 4y ago
      Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you’re saying, but idevicebackup2 does exactly that.
  - HWR_14 4y ago
    They make special external disks (that may require an iOS app). I bought some for a friend. But you can also have it connect to a computer over wifi and auto-backup. Does Google let you do that?
- m463 4y ago
  this is false. Apple does not support this. If they did, you could connect a USB drive to your phone or tablet and save the photos. To some extent this was eventually solved by third party vendors laboriously creating lightning flash drives and creating an app to talk to them. But it is definite that you cannot backup your phone. Even apple's backup method is crippled. I would like an image backup - where you could back up every bit of phone data - but apple gets in the way of that.
  - HWR_14 4y ago
    You can have it automatically generate an image over WiFi to a computer with an external drive. I mean, it requires iTunes, but it's trivial. But compare that to an Android phone, where I have no idea how to get access to anything more than pictures without ADB.
    - kornhole 4y ago
      This is where Android shines. I have everything on my phone daily backed up to my personal Nextcloud server. If I ever get in a bind, with a few gestures I can wipe my whole phone and then later restore everything. One can alternatively use Syncthing to sync files to a PC.
      - Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago
        Well, I suspect you are rooted for this and a whole bunch of app complain about rooting. I have android and appreciate the ability to backup, but it's infuriating what apps are doing.
        kornhole 4y ago
        I am not rooted, but I am using GrapheneOS which is technically a fork of Android. I am using the built in Seedvault for app backup to Nextcloud. Files are synced with Nextcloud client.
    - m463 4y ago
sidewndr46 4y ago
If Apple was satisfied with the money they were making, they wouldn't be Apple. They'd be another irrelevant consumer technology company. It is only due to that ruthless mindset that they have gotten where they are today.
- Moissanite 4y ago
  To give them their due, they do a good job of at least appearing to offer superior service through vertical integration - as a long-time Android user, I am probably going to make the switch at the iPhone 15 release to make the most of this while it lasts. Car companies can't offer anything close; this subscription features thing from Intel, Mercedes and BMW is bold-faced grifting and needs to be stamped out with extreme prejudice.
  - e7beca0d 4y ago
    Running your own software on your own iPhone requires a $99 a year subscription. Just for code signing, it's basically pure profit, and there's no practical way around it. It's a classic masterpiece of platform gatekeeping: Getting money for doing nothing, but being the only one who can do it.
noasaservice 4y ago
> growth at all cost Capitalism. It used to be about making a great product, and people would buy it. Then it became "We can generate a fake demand with various psychological tricks" to get people to buy it. Then it became "Give away the razor and charge $$$$$$ for the blades". Then it became "Buy the thing and subscription and save!" Then it became "Buy this crippled thing so we can sell you the subscription for recurring income" <- This is where we're at. Point being, it's not about making a great product. It's about using emotional tricks to get people to buy a thing AND a subscription, to get what 10y ago would have been a lump-sum you-own-it thing.
- jussy 4y ago
  When we calculate inflation do we calculate this factor? That a product has become more expensive to buy, more expensive to maintain, more expensive to run and you have to pay for features you used to get as part of the product purchase.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  Where's "convince government to build a moat around our industry" fall on your timeline?
  - Moissanite 4y ago
    That's the brown smear underlining the whole thing.
  - noasaservice 4y ago
    That's not a step - it's whenever you are large enough or have the right connections to do that. I was talking about large trends of how capitalist thought in the USA is going. And at this moment in time, the "best" strategy is to milk customers with recurring purchases. And it turns out the value-add didn't work. So feature-removal-and-sell-back recurring purchase is the current phase. We're seeing that everywhere in IOT, gadgets, kitchen consumer gear, vehicles. Basically, it's the manufacturers exerting control post-purchase with the implicit threat that they can and will brick your stuff. To put bluntly, we need government oversight over these realms. First-sale doctrine needs to cover "functionality sold at bill of sale". "No bundling" (of additional services that "complete" a thing) also needs to be strongly enforced. And if/when companies do stuff later and remove features (PS3 for an easy example), that they need to be dealt with as if a hacker did that - as C-level ordered felonies with prison, direct massive compensation to the wronged parties, and massive fines (company-ending if need be).
matthewmacleod 4y ago
You can literally configure a Mac with a couple of clicks to offload every image from an iPhone to whatever folder you want locally. It's honestly hard to think of a way it could possibly be made easier.
- kjkjadksj 4y ago
  Where it becomes hard is if the photos only exist on icloud. I have a good 60gb i cannot move off icloud. First party tools dont work. The download website apple provides for icloud data doesnt work. Photos app crashes to desktop. Third party command line interface tools don’t work. I’m at a loss. These data are being held hostage.

HWR_14 4y ago

Backing up iPhone photos to an external disk is pretty easy. It's not the happy path because most people cannot handle their own backups.

plussed_reader 4y ago
Not if you want to avoid itunes or icloud.
- simjnd 4y ago
  If you have macOS you don't need either, just plug your iPhone open up "/Applications/Image Capture.app" and it will show your photos. You can select and drag and drop to a disk and delete them all from this app.
  - lostlogin 4y ago
    Having it happen automatically is what I was after, and that isn’t particularly easy to achieve. There must surely be a better way than my nasty hack, but I do now have automatic backups of iPhone photos onto a nas: A VM running macOS and a script. Open Photos.app and sync with ‘Download Originals’ checked. Quit Photos.app and rsync the folder ‘Originals’ out of the app bundle and onto a NAS. Once finished, reopen Photos.app. It’s quite horrible getting the script to run as permissions get tricky with chrontab, so I used Lingon X to schedule it.
    - glorioushubris 4y ago
      Maybe try it with an app on the phone instead? I've been using Synology's photos app to automatically upload everything in my photos library to my NAS for a couple of months now, and it's been seamless. Other apps, like PhotoSync, seem to offer similar functionality in a platform-independent way.
      - lostlogin 4y ago
        Thank you - I’ve had this suggested before but just couldn’t get it to work. I’ll have another go as that is obviously way better (and saves running a very large VM).
    - HWR_14 4y ago
      Modern versions of iTunes and modern iOS versions can be set up so that whenever they are on the same network iTunes automatically backs up over WiFi in the background. Then it's just a matter of a cron job pushing the files to the NAS.
      - lostlogin 4y ago
        That’s not a million miles off what I’m doing. It’s unhelpful that there isn’t a built in way to get images out of Photos.app as downloading a full library can use a lot of storage.
    - simjnd 4y ago
      My bad, I misunderstood. Do you do all of this with an AppleScript? I would be really interested to look at this if you have it hosted on a repo somewhere.
- 0x0 4y ago
  Image Capture.app, which is built in to macOS, is very no-nonsense and works great.
- acdha 4y ago
  You can use an adapter: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD821AM/A/lightning-to-usb-camera-adapter https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD821AM/A/lightning-to-us...
- HWR_14 4y ago
  I mean, "avoiding backup software on your computer" seems like a big ask for organized backups. But, yeah, I have lightening drives that connect directly to download pictures onto (well, purchased as a gift).. They even also have USB to be read in a computer.
capableweb 4y ago
Can you just connect a external disk into the iPhone and click on "Backup" or it requires more than that?
- MagicMoonlight 4y ago
  No, but you also can't do that with a linux computer or any other device. You can easily copy and paste all of the photos onto a computer though.
  - josephcsible 4y ago
    What's stopping me from setting up a Linux computer to do that?
  - dividuum 4y ago
    Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you’re saying, but idevicebackup2 does exactly that.
- HWR_14 4y ago
  They make special external disks (that may require an iOS app). I bought some for a friend. But you can also have it connect to a computer over wifi and auto-backup. Does Google let you do that?
m463 4y ago
this is false. Apple does not support this. If they did, you could connect a USB drive to your phone or tablet and save the photos. To some extent this was eventually solved by third party vendors laboriously creating lightning flash drives and creating an app to talk to them. But it is definite that you cannot backup your phone. Even apple's backup method is crippled. I would like an image backup - where you could back up every bit of phone data - but apple gets in the way of that.
- HWR_14 4y ago
  You can have it automatically generate an image over WiFi to a computer with an external drive. I mean, it requires iTunes, but it's trivial. But compare that to an Android phone, where I have no idea how to get access to anything more than pictures without ADB.
  - kornhole 4y ago
    This is where Android shines. I have everything on my phone daily backed up to my personal Nextcloud server. If I ever get in a bind, with a few gestures I can wipe my whole phone and then later restore everything. One can alternatively use Syncthing to sync files to a PC.
    - Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago
      Well, I suspect you are rooted for this and a whole bunch of app complain about rooting. I have android and appreciate the ability to backup, but it's infuriating what apps are doing.
      - kornhole 4y ago
        I am not rooted, but I am using GrapheneOS which is technically a fork of Android. I am using the built in Seedvault for app backup to Nextcloud. Files are synced with Nextcloud client.
  - m463 4y ago

sidewndr46 4y ago

If Apple was satisfied with the money they were making, they wouldn't be Apple. They'd be another irrelevant consumer technology company. It is only due to that ruthless mindset that they have gotten where they are today.

Moissanite 4y ago
To give them their due, they do a good job of at least appearing to offer superior service through vertical integration - as a long-time Android user, I am probably going to make the switch at the iPhone 15 release to make the most of this while it lasts. Car companies can't offer anything close; this subscription features thing from Intel, Mercedes and BMW is bold-faced grifting and needs to be stamped out with extreme prejudice.
- e7beca0d 4y ago
  Running your own software on your own iPhone requires a $99 a year subscription. Just for code signing, it's basically pure profit, and there's no practical way around it. It's a classic masterpiece of platform gatekeeping: Getting money for doing nothing, but being the only one who can do it.

noasaservice 4y ago

> growth at all cost Capitalism. It used to be about making a great product, and people would buy it. Then it became "We can generate a fake demand with various psychological tricks" to get people to buy it. Then it became "Give away the razor and charge $$$$$$ for the blades". Then it became "Buy the thing and subscription and save!" Then it became "Buy this crippled thing so we can sell you the subscription for recurring income" <- This is where we're at. Point being, it's not about making a great product. It's about using emotional tricks to get people to buy a thing AND a subscription, to get what 10y ago would have been a lump-sum you-own-it thing.

jussy 4y ago
When we calculate inflation do we calculate this factor? That a product has become more expensive to buy, more expensive to maintain, more expensive to run and you have to pay for features you used to get as part of the product purchase.
dsfyu404ed 4y ago
Where's "convince government to build a moat around our industry" fall on your timeline?
- Moissanite 4y ago
  That's the brown smear underlining the whole thing.
- noasaservice 4y ago
  That's not a step - it's whenever you are large enough or have the right connections to do that. I was talking about large trends of how capitalist thought in the USA is going. And at this moment in time, the "best" strategy is to milk customers with recurring purchases. And it turns out the value-add didn't work. So feature-removal-and-sell-back recurring purchase is the current phase. We're seeing that everywhere in IOT, gadgets, kitchen consumer gear, vehicles. Basically, it's the manufacturers exerting control post-purchase with the implicit threat that they can and will brick your stuff. To put bluntly, we need government oversight over these realms. First-sale doctrine needs to cover "functionality sold at bill of sale". "No bundling" (of additional services that "complete" a thing) also needs to be strongly enforced. And if/when companies do stuff later and remove features (PS3 for an easy example), that they need to be dealt with as if a hacker did that - as C-level ordered felonies with prison, direct massive compensation to the wronged parties, and massive fines (company-ending if need be).

matthewmacleod 4y ago

You can literally configure a Mac with a couple of clicks to offload every image from an iPhone to whatever folder you want locally. It's honestly hard to think of a way it could possibly be made easier.

kjkjadksj 4y ago
Where it becomes hard is if the photos only exist on icloud. I have a good 60gb i cannot move off icloud. First party tools dont work. The download website apple provides for icloud data doesnt work. Photos app crashes to desktop. Third party command line interface tools don’t work. I’m at a loss. These data are being held hostage.